How to Write a Resume Skills Section: Tips to Highlight Your Strengths

How to Write a Resume Skills Section: Tips to Highlight Your Strengths

Skills in the resume are the most important thing in the resume because they show the ability of the candidate. Often, employers pay special attention to the skills section to determine who should move on to the next step of the hiring process.

Hard vs. soft skills in the resume

Recruiters are always looking to hire employees who have the right mix of two different types of skills: soft skills and hard skills.

Soft Skills:

Soft skills relate to how you work. It includes interpersonal (people) skills, communication skills, listening skills, time management, and empathy, among others. Hiring managers typically look for job candidates with soft skills because they make someone more successful in the workplace.

Hard Skills:

Hard skills are teachable abilities or skill sets that are easy to quantify. Typically, you’ll learn hard skills in the classroom, through books or other training materials, or on the job. These hard skills are often listed in your cover letter and on your resume and are easy for an employer or recruiter to recognize.

As a job seeker, it’s important to highlight your best hard and soft skills to position yourself as a well-rounded candidate.

Bulleted List of All Skills in resume

Hard Skills:

• Providing customer support
• Product knowledge
• JIRA
• Zendesk
• Salesforce

Soft Skills:

• Decision-making
• Written and verbal communication
• Teamwork and collaboration
• Empathy

Here are some tips to help you craft the skills in the resume.

1. Be relevant to the position you’re after: pay attention to the required skills mentioned in the job ad and list those on your resume.
2. Create a legible, separate skills section: list up to 10 key job skills, optionally adding descriptions of your proficiency level.
3. If you’re writing a functional (skills-based) or a combination resume, create a skills summary and put it at the top: use the 4 most relevant skills as subheadings, and add achievements that validate each skill below.
4. Refer to your top skills in your resume’s work experience section to show how you put your abilities to use.
5. Add 2–3 most relevant skills to your resume profile—a summary or objective.
6. Research what skills are most in demand in your industry and be sure to list them on a resume if you think you have them.

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